


Soft Boiled

by Envoy



Category: DCU, Gotham (TV)
Genre: DarkbutSoft!Jim, Fantasizing, Jim Has Issues, Jim hates himself, Light Masochism, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Time Skips, and no self awareness, as far as we know...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 08:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15432783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Envoy/pseuds/Envoy
Summary: The locker room bench was hard under his ass, whisky sour on the back of his tongue. The strip lights flickered weakly and the locker room smelled of piss, and fast food. But that was okay. Tonight only a special kind of degradation would scratch the itch.Post Blackgate Jim is in an unhealthy mood, so he touches base with some of his darkest and most deeply buried impulses.





	Soft Boiled

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this is pretty trashy. There's a big time jump to the present season but very little plot.

 

1.

It was a dark night for Jim Gordon. He was back on the force but not back on track. Half the time he slept in the back room at the precinct when he didn’t want to face the apartment.

Now he found himself in the back of the precinct after hours with his right hand down the front of his pants, having discarded cheap newsstand pornography for the cheaper reel of his own memories. The locker room bench was hard under his ass, whisky sour on the back of his tongue. The strip lights flickered weakly and the locker room smelled of piss, and fast food. But that was okay. Tonight only a special kind of degradation would scratch the itch.

Seeing Lee in this light was for another man now, not him, and so he skirted around her edges. Picturing her sweet olive-scented outline and getting a sick voyeuristic thrill from thoughts of the woman he had probably loved. God help him, he even thought about Barbara, something he had not done since she’d had her psychotic break or whatever the hell it was. At least not the way he was thinking of her now. Had he missed this, all this time, Barbara bent over the arm of the couch just for him? He couldn’t say, really. He felt superstitiously like she would know what he was doing, and if he ever had to deal with her he would see it in her face. There was the shame he had expected, like a whisky chaser; that heated things up a notch.

He was chewing his lip with desperation now. The rough swipe of his palm was perfunctory and altogether not enough.

Littering the bench at his side beneath the dirty magazines he had gone through already were some of his old files, which he couldn’t explain his attachment to except as reminders of his many minor failures. Restlessly, he tugged the corner of a folder free. It was the Galavan file. Sporadically the memory of that night would drift across his consciousness prompting a stab of emotion so intense he had never tried to categorise it, thinking it best to shut that part of himself down. Now it shot straight between his legs.

He had a thought; a horrible thought. An impermissible thought. But he was already reaching out to turn the page of the file as sweat prickled at the back of his neck and behind his knees. When he saw Penguin’s face on the page an audible gasp escaped him.

He felt like he’d been turned upside down, inside out. He threw back his head, the sting of lemon hit the back of his tongue, with eyes pressed closed he imagined the squeak of bottle green leather between the pads of his fingers. What it would feel like. The flutter of feathers. Penguin smelled like leather, borscht, cold and oily, and like lemons. For some reason Jim’s heart tripped over itself when he realised that. It was so vivid he could taste it.

He opened his eyes, forced himself to look down at Oswald’s face. Another current of electricity slithered down his spine. At the same time he started to touch himself again, lightly, barely grazing two fingers against it, afraid of the strength of his arousal. This time his own touch had his head spinning.

The way he said Jim’s name, like a sharp sudden thing. He felt – he imagined – the meticulousness of Penguin’s ire redirected against him, the sharp point of his little flip knife at his throat. It didn’t matter if he deserved it or not. He wanted it. And then Penguin’s face, as it had turned unthinkingly to Jim after the relentless volley of blows on Galavan’s body, in that moment of triumph – sated, spent, undone, and yet lost. Jim moaned wetly into the sleeve of his jacket, biting into the fabric.

Seeing him kill was a frightening, inappropriate spectacle. He’d mauled the man, like an animal feasting on a carcass. Transported, like people experiencing God. Like a Saint suffering a vision.

He stared thoughtless at the picture trembling in his fingers until it filled his whole vision, eclipsing everything.

Bloodlust. Pallid mottled skin. A rash of freckles. Blue eyes. Quick fingers. Licking splatters of blood off his face. Desperate. _Funny_. It was too easy to feel his presence; it came in a torrent of images and sensations that had his breath caught up in his throat.

Jim was a soft-touch. Easy target. Lamb to the slaughter. Something gentle in him _wanted_.

His vision was blurring but he managed to imagine Penguin stood there. _You confuse me_ , he’d say to him. He’d tssk and throw him a smile that was _wicked_. And – _Fuck._ Jesus.

He’d stand above him, and Jim would be down on his knees like this – he slid from the bench to the cold tile as he thought it, while his hips juddered up against his hand – because Penguin was the most vulnerable murderer he’d ever seen but he was the one bending. _I’ll be your slave for life._ Bending until he felt like he’d snap in half. Any second now the break would come, he’d split down the fucking middle. Please God.

 

Palm spread against the tile. Seeing blood, and knives. His whole body contorted like a fit, like an ecstasy. His mouth open around the ‘O’ that was the beginning of Oswald’s name.

He had to wipe the runnels of tears from his face. And drool, Christ. Disgusting. He was shaking, like he’d just come out of a fever. On the floor beneath him where he panted on hands and knees was the small image of Oswald that had been paper-clipped to the paperwork. He swept it away in disgust as nausea began to boil in his stomach. In a minute he’d be retching over the toilet bowl.

 

2.

More than anything, Oswald appeared _bored_ in custody. He had barely acknowledged Jim all day and had now begun tapping out an irritated rhythm with his nail bitten fingers on the table between them.

‘I’m supposed to be cross-examining you, can you at least try to concentrate?’

Their back-and-forth was more conversational than it should have been in the circumstances, but Jim was more comfortable in his skin these days, and felt less need to hide behind his being a cop. Finally, Oswald looked at him directly, and it was a withering look.

‘You know as well as I do that these questions are a waste of my time.’

‘Be thankful you’re not in the cage,’ he growled.

That was a mistake. Oswald rolled his eyes dramatically and withdrew, becoming unresponsive again.

Jim found himself wishing Penguin were a common criminal, the type who were in and out of halfway houses, rather than running the city one minute and being dumped in the river by Nygma the next. He’d be so much easier to keep tabs on.

‘Is it Ed? Are you two up to something?’

‘I do have a life outside of Edward Nygma, you know,’ Oswald snapped.

It was something he preferred not to think about. The exact nature of their… relationship eluded him and made him deeply uneasy. Worried for somebody’s safety, or maybe for everyone’s.

‘Good.’

‘But that’s not your business, is it?’

He wanted to tell him to be careful, for some reason. Even though he was like a stain, impossible to get rid of – _for God’s sake be careful with Ed_ … but he was right, it was none of his business. Impotent, frustrated, he opened his mouth and said, stupidly:

‘Half the time, I don’t even know if you’re alive…’

Penguin looked like he’d been slapped across the face, then he began to laugh.

‘Do you mean to say you’ve brought me in here as some kind of check-up?’

‘I’ve _brought you here_ on police bus– ’

‘Jim, you don’t know what it means to be a home. To be a refuge. You haven’t managed to hold onto a single person in your life and now you want _me_ to check in with you... You have my file, isn’t that enough?’

He blinked, once, ice in the pit of him. Penguin squinted.

‘What’s the matter? You look ill. Did I say something not to your liking?’

‘You have no idea.’

His voice was hoarse and chalky. His legs had gone weak under the table. It was time to leave.

He gathered his papers, but found he was – _no, goddammit, please no_ – a stab of fear shot through him. Oswald was watching him. Oh, he could be bothered to pay attention now, alright. _It was a dark night of the soul, it wasn’t real, just a taboo to be broken, just a photograph, not the real..._

‘What’s wrong, Jim?’

He stared dumbly into Oswald’s face, into his open face that had the gall to look uncertain, even a bit concerned. Jim would get out of there, right now.  

‘Will you just keep talking, please?’

‘Alright… I…’

‘Anything.’

‘I, uh, like my eggs soft-boiled. But no one can do them quite like my mother did.’

Jim smiled thinly, his chest hurting. His knee brushed Oswald’s and nerves all over his body lit up. He was dumb with it, already, and how was that possible? Could barely sift his thoughts out of a soup.

‘Do you want to save me or do you want to stop me, Jim?’

Blood ran cold. And hot.

‘No. I mean, neither. It’s not about you.’

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

It had gone too far. He stood, stilted, lightheaded, left the room and turned the key in the door. Stood behind the one way mirror. 

‘Jim!’ He was angry again, now, limping out of his chair, ‘What is going on? You can’t keep me in here.’

His face flashed as he turned toward the glass and Jim let out a heavy breath.

‘Are you behind there? Let me out!’

He staggered right up to the mirror, and slammed his hands against the glass, making Jim flinch. When he spoke he had lowered his voice and it trickled over Jim’s skin like silk.

‘Don’t think I won’t make you pay if you keep me here a second longer. You may be Captain but I still own half of the men you command.’

Jim leant his head against the glass, and shuddered. A few inches away a pair of icy blue eyes scanned across him although they couldn’t see him. Oswald’s rash of freckles were flushed with irritation and he was breathing shallowly. Jim's hand was fisted in the fabric of his pant leg.

'What,' he swallowed, breathing against the glass, 'what will you do to me?'

 


End file.
